Donald Hamilton - The Betrayers

I guess what really bugged me-aside from the simple, incomprehensible fact of her being here at all-was that I was entirely in the wrong, blaming her for what had happened. Isobel had picked up my gun. She had been about to shoot. Jill's strategy in sneaking up on us without warning might be criticized, but her reaction to the threat could not, considering how she'd been trained.

It seemed to be just one of those sickening damn-fool things that happen when you leave guns around carelessly-and I was the guy whose gun it was, who'd left it there. If I'd taken care of my weapon as I should, the thing would never have happened.

The figure by the pool did not move as we approached. The faded, incongruous silk dress no longer seemed like a good joke on stuffy old civilization. It was just a small indignity added to the greater indignity of death. I was reasonably sure, anyway, but I knelt beside the body and lifted it gently. There was no need to turn it over completely to see the great, shiny spill of blood below the left breast. I let her down again slowly.

I knelt there for a little, holding her, telling myself I was getting too old for this work, or something. Hell, people died all the time, even attractive women. They got smashed up in cars, they got shot by jealous boyfriends, they caught diseases antibiotics couldn't cure, and if nothing else worked they took sleeping pills by the fistful in the spirit of do-it-yourself. I had a job to do, even if I still didn't quite know what it was. I shouldn't be wasting time or emotion on one lousy society dame dead on a crummy Pacific island, even if she had died kind of by mistake.

I heard Jill's young voice: "Aren't you taking this awfully big, Eric?"

She was right, of course, but I looked up at her and said, "Children should be seen and not heard. Comb your damn hair and shut your damn mouth."

She said stubbornly, "I mean, if you want me to say I'm sorry, I'll say it. But really, if you're going to make a career of this business, you can't have a spastic over every enemy agent you kill. Can you?"

I stared at her for a long moment. "Come again?"

She frowned, surprised. "You mean you didn't know? I heard them talking. I heard all about her. Her code name is-was-Irma, and she was one of Moscow's best in the Asiatic division. Maybe that's why you never came across her dossier; you never worked against that bunch, did you? She disappeared for a while and now she turns up here, calling herself first Isobel McLain and then, I gather, Isobel Marner, your loving sister-in-law. Just how they worked that I didn't hear. It may have been kind of tough on the real Isobel Marner, if any. Of course, they may simply have gambled on your being in no position to check on whether or not such a person actually exists." Jill looked down at me in a speculative, adult way. "I see you don't believe me, Eric. The woman must have been very good. Very convincing. But maybe you'll believe this. Where's her purse?"

I hesitated briefly, and jerked my head toward the battered-looking white kid purse that lay beside a pair of battered-looking white kid pumps on the nearby rock. Jill got it and opened it.

"How do you think I knew where to come?" she said. "I came here to warn you. Monk knows you're here. He's been tracking you ever since you turned Halawa Point at the end of the island early this morning. Look."

She had a familiar cigarette lighter in her hand. She slid the cover off to show me the interior mechanism. Half was what you'd expect to find inside an ordinary butane lighter, slimmed down in one dimension. The other half looked like a mass of dirty spaghetti with bugs in it, which is the way most of that fancy electronic equipment looks to the uninitiated.

"A beeper," I said softly. "By God, she was carrying a beeper all the time!"

As I spoke, I felt the woman I held stir minutely in my arms.

I WASN'T QUITE aware of making the decision. The mental computer just ran the tape through on its own, and came up with an answer. Without really thinking it over consciously I found myself closing my fingers hard on Isobel's arm, warning her to lie perfectly still.

To mask the signal, I lowered her to the ground at last, making it look, I hoped, like an act of rejection.

"Well, I guess she isn't playing possum this time," I said loudly. "She fooled a couple of Monk's men that way once, pretending to be unconscious when she wasn't. At least she said she did, but I guess it was just part of the act." I gave the bare arm another sharp little squeeze to call attention to my words, and went on harshly for Jill's benefit, "I should have realized she played too smart and cool all along for the simple society bitch she was supposed to be."

Jill just dropped the lighter back into the purse, snapped the purse closed, and tossed it back onto the rock. I got up, and glanced at my hands, and wiped them on my coat. Then, as an afterthought, I tossed the coat over the woman on the ground, ostensibly as a Christian gesture, and flung my shirt over her legs to finish the job of covering the body decently. I turned to face Jill.

"All right, little girl," I said. "So the old pro is just an impressionable sucker after all. Is that why you shot her?"

"Well, I knew she was dangerous. When she went for the gun…" Jill shrugged.

That reminded me that I'd forgotten the weapon once more. I just couldn't seem to keep my mind on it, any more than if it had been a toy pistol. I got it and tucked it into my pants, making room for it by taking out Jill's silvery weapon and giving it back to her apologetically.

"Sorry I was rough on you. I suppose you had to play it cagey, sneaking up on us. You couldn't know how she'd react."

"That's right, Matt. I knew she'd probably guess I'd picked up enough information to expose her. I had to take her by surprise. I'm sorry it worked out so badly. I… I'm not really very experienced at this sort of stuff, you know."

The little hesitation was very convincing. I regarded the girl thoughtfully, noting that her gaudy shirt had lost a strategic button and most of a sleeve, but that it looked just a little like the kind of phony-ragged garment, artfully tattered with scissors, that you'd wear to a masquerade. I was willing to bet, now, that she'd smeared the mud on her jeans with her own hands, to emphasize the hardships she'd endured to reach me. But she was still a lovely thing, with her fine tan and her striking blonde hair and her frank blue eyes. It was just too bad she was a goddamn liar.

Either that or she'd been deceived, although it was hard to see how it could have been done. Or I was the world's biggest sucker, because I didn't believe a word she'd said against Isobel. I mean, as I'd said earlier, there are times in this faithless business when you've simply got to haul off and have a little faith in somebody.

What it amounted to was that I had to choose. I had to choose between the tall blonde girl who sounded very convincing and had a trick cigarette lighter for evidence, and the slim dark-haired woman who'd said to me softly, "Matt, don't laugh, but I'm happy." I could believe that the woman who'd said that, in the way she'd said it, was exactly what she'd claimed to be, or I could believe that she was the world's most consummate actress.

I didn't think they came that good. And the cigarette lighter didn't really count. It could have been planted in her purse at any time, without her knowledge. They're made by the millions, they burn for months, and one looks just like another-at least, a duplicate wouldn't have been hard to find. For a choice, the switch had been made when Francis and his sidekick searched her room, mauling her in the process. There had never been a really good explanation for that whole clumsy performance until now; and Francis had been trying to warn me about something in this connection when he died.